hendricius

Great feedback. I agree 70% hydration might be low. But it is a good way to start baking. I highly suggest that everyone should A/B test this variable and see which loafs he likes more.

Great feedback. Why not open up a pull request and add some of your findings? That would be great additions.

This post is a followup to this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16946178. The other post is part 1. The post is about making your sour dough.

This post however is about how to use the made sourdough to actually bake a sourdough bread. I hope it's not too confusing.

Thanks :D. My bad.

You can also speed up the process and have your bread ready in 1 hour. You just have to kneed the dough way more. When I have guests I use my machine to kneed the dough.

I would suggest to score the bread in the middle before baking. That way you will have a higher rise in the oven.

I did an experiment here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BhERhlnDgdQ

Basically it's like cracks in the surface. At an angle the rise can be much higher.

Exactly.

Yes, but it is really to to have one machine to rule them all. It also depends on each flour you are using. The machine would work better in some countries than others.

Well done. I have the same issue. I have to weekly commute to another city. I have a really small apartment there with a super tiny oven. It's a challenge to bake, but that won't stop me. You can bake bread everywhere.

That would be really interesting to have in the recipes as well. Did you conduct any A/B tests?

Haha that's true. The beauty and difficulty is that there is always a little bit of random in every recipe. We would need a docker machine as kitchen in which we bake to avoid any side effects. Every oven, every flour is different.

That's amazing! What are here most important learnings? TLDR :D.

Thanks

No salt at all in the sour dough. When baking you will add salt. I like around 2%. But in the mother sour dough you do not want any salt. This link is only about how to get your actual mother sour dough, not baking! That's still TODO and will follow up later.

Edit:

2% of the flour's weight in salt. Let's say you bake 700 grams of flour (500 grams flour, 200 grams sour dough) then you would add 14 grams of salt. Note please that this is my personal preference. It could be you prefer more or less salt.

I really tried to skip all the mambojambo. Most recipes do not go into detail to answer the question of the why. It's almost like using any kind library when programming. You don't know the internals. My goal however is to really deep dive and actually go through the process of how the internals of that library work.

Exactly. This strategy has been used by people since we first invented bread. I always think we should use it, it's ready for the taking.

Excactly. You mentioned a good point. It's a different kind of taste simply. However you can replace the yeast in any regular recipe with sour dough.

I failed so many times. But usually there is a good explanation to why your baking failed. I love it, you really have to use your brain.

Also really interesting. I would be curious to know whether both yeast and bacteria survived in this dried setup.

You can also go to many local bakeries. Here in Germany the are happy to give you some starter for free. But I still think making your own one is so easy, it's 14 minutes of time over a week.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I think what you describe is natural. Don't worry. As you feed the mother dough from time to time that taste will diminish.

Interesting. Do you have a source for this?

Wouldn't freezing kill the bacteria and yeast?

Here in Germany many people trade starters across villages. It would be interesting to have a scientific study on the differences. Maybe there is different bacteria/yeast in the different villages?

Thanks. I usually do the baking, my fiancee does the pictures :D. I love to bake and a/b test the different doughs.

Really interesting, thanks for the links. I would be curious to see how that starter behaves differently then mine.

I really need a good microscope to analyse the different doughs in detail.

The reason - it is not because she agrees with the matter. It is because it is not her job to decide. It is the job of the law to clarify if he is guilty or not.

Thanks!

thanks. Linode looks great!